posted
My mother was talking with me about our area back when she was growing up (and before, during the times of my grandparents and great-grandparents, who all have lived on the farm I live at now). In the course of the conversation, when talking about our chickens, she mentioned that they used to keep hens until they quit laying [eggs] and then if they didn't use them as stew chickens themselves, they would take them to town (live) and the produce man there would buy them to butcher for selling in his store. It was a way to make a little extra $$ when needed.
I grumbled because that isn't possible anymore -- too many federal regulations on meat -- USDA and all that -- no more friendly selling of good, wholesome free-range chickens to your local grocer. Too big a chance of getting sued if someone doesn't cook it long enough, or whatever.
Then I also had a conversation with my son's friend. This friend works in the deli department of Wal-Mart. He was dismayed that they are required by company policy to make a "certain number" of things like rotisserie chicken, regardless of how many customers they have, and if they don't sell after a certain period of time, they are thrown out. Same with many other items he makes -- it all gets thrown in the trash if it is through a slow time and no one buys them. He said they can't give them to homeless shelters, or take them home (employees) or anything -- because Wal-Mart doesn't want the liabilibity if they give them to a charity and them someone gets sick (for whatever reason) and blames the food and sues them. I have found this is also the policy at other store delis around town.
To me-- this just makes me shake my head in disgust. Such waste. Such a disposable society on one hand, when there is so much need on the other hand. Why do these legalities keep us from helping each other?
I'm not ranting against lawyers (cuz I love Dag) but the whole society mentality of suing over every little thing has allowed things to get like this, in part.
posted
This all happens because people get greedy and think that taking from corporations doesn't hurt anybody. The corporations in turn do things to protect themselves.
I am not saying what they are doing is correct. I'm saying if we were not such a sue happy country things might be different.
This doesn't prevent you or him from dumpster diving either.
When any entity is more concerned for the welfare of other entities around it, than it's self, you have a happier society all around. But you cannot allow people to take advantage of you, what do you do?
posted
There are, I have heard, good samaritan laws out there that state that a company that donates food cannot be sued for it by stupid greedy people. Ask him to look into those. Also, there should be a program where companies donate food and then get some sort of reward like a tax credit or something like that. Folks also should be able to set up there own little selling free ranged chicken stores or something, I'm sure there would be a market for that... There's always some sort of way... Worse is farmers growing more food than they can sell and being told to throw it away. I was in this Christain program that gleaned crops and gave them to organizations. It was a great weeklong experience.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I can sell eggs -- but I don't think I can sell chickens (retail) I could probably give them away. But that isn't really the point, I guess. It just concerns me when some laws, or lawsuits, keep people from freely exchanging goods to whoever wants and/or needs them.
posted
When I worked at Bradlees, one of our jobs was to slice up "excess" clothing so it couldn't be used. We had to do it with the security guard watching.
Made me sick, because there wasn't even the liability issue here. The policy was simply that they didn't want to give people incentive not to buy.
quote:He was dismayed that they are required by company policy to make a "certain number" of things like rotisserie chicken, irregardless of how many customers they have, and if they don't sell after a certain period of time, they are thrown out.
At the stores I shop at, the chickens sit under heat lamps til someone gets one. How long can they sit out like that before they are considered unsafe to eat? It may be that they can't be delivered to a charity before they would be considered unsafe by regulations.
What about bakery items? Do they at least take leftover bread to shelters?
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
That's strange. A lot of big stores here donate the food when it's close to the date you can't eat it anymore. And everyone seems to think it's great and no one would sue them. As a matter of fact, a lot of people ( me included) buy in these stores because it makes me think they are less cynical than the others and I like to think that by giving them a better benefice, I encourage them to keep donating food. EDIT to add : zgator, they could give the food just before it's not safe to eat it.
[ November 30, 2004, 09:51 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Yes, Anna, I think this is becoming an American phenomenon. Which is sad, because I think it is so opposite of the way things were originally designed to be.
There are stores here, I'm sure, that do donate. But when a mega-chain like Wal-Mart throws this much away, it just really upsets me because I know that means tons and tons of food nationwide.
posted
I'm afraid that's where we are leading to anyway. For exemple, there are more and more people who sue doctors even when there is no obvious medical error. I think it's the begining. And it makes me sad.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Anna, I thinking about cooked meat items that are left under a heat lamp for several hours during the day for customers. The time til they spoil is probably measured in hours, not days. I agree that refridgerated items that have reached their "sell by" date can be given away.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
In winter, you can easily find an organisation to give the food in a few hours. At last in the big towns.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I'm certainly not trying to pick on WalMart. They are by far not the only ones -- it is just because of their size, that this means it is megatons of food.
I have relatives that work for Walmart, so I'm not slamming them -- and they have been generous with cash contributions to some organizations I've been in. I'm just talking about the practice of throwing out good food, in general.
posted
Zgator : anyway I always found that stupid that some organisations give food only in winter. I mean, what should people do on summer ? Eat grass ? Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Well, the obvious answer would be to allow people who need the food to come to the store at prescribed times to get the leftover foods. That's not going to happen, of course.
posted
I don't think it's the fear of suit that would keep them from doing that, but the fear of having "undesirables" in their stores.
There's no easy answer to the lawsuit question. We don't want to let people off the hook for knowingly giving away dangerous food. But we want to encourage charity. Remember, it's not just suits which win that cost the donor money - even defending one is likely to end the program. Maybe some kind of big insurance pool?
posted
The cafeteria at Brown gives leftover food to homeless shelters and such. But the policy is that they can only give unopened batches of food. If a serving tray of food has been opened (saran wrap taken off) for serving to students, then that tray has to get thrown away at the end of the meal.
That's what I've been told, at least. What annoyed me was when they had servers spoon out the food for you. They gave everyone the same amount, which resulted in a lot of waste for people like me who are half the size of your average football player. Now they do self-serve which gives you the opportunity to choose wisely.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
One wonders if Good Samaritan giving laws could be established, similar to the Good Samaritan passerby aid laws.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Well, rubble -- I thought about it as I wrote that, and second-guessed myself, then couldn't decide on the write form/spelling or whatever. So I finally just let it go.
So how should I fix it? Should it just be "regardless"?
quote:Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.
I would use regardless, but I'm not an English major either.
posted
I was an English major, and irregardless makes my brain implode. Use regardless and save my brain from more trauma. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Agreed. I love your argument and the discussion it provoked, but the "irregardless" took me right out of the rant.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
All the food I've cooked for shelters while at university has had to be (just about) vegan. Not that we have any moral qualms with serving animal products, but stores won't donate meat, eggs or milk. They will, however, quite happily give you a big of half-rotten onions. It's the darndest thing. Not only that, but it's so much more difficult to get a kitchen cleared to prepare meats than to prepare vegetables. It's no worth the extra legal hassle much of the time.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:One wonders if Good Samaritan giving laws could be established, similar to the Good Samaritan passerby aid laws.
Here's why I don't think that would work. Good Samaritan laws tend to raise the level of culpability at which liability exists. For example, a non-doctor passer attempting to help by may be exempt from claims of negligence, but would be liable for gross negligence or recklessness.
The lines between negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness are easily blurred. This means that many instances of donating unsafe food could be colorably couched as gross negligence or recklessness.
A corporation is unlikely to risk something that will require thousands of dollars in legal fees, even if it could successfully get a complaint dismissed at the earliest possibility. If a complaint survives to discovery, the fees get up to tens of thousands of dollars very quickly.
Even settling for nuisance value would cost thousands. It's one thing for a corporation to factor this into a profit-generating activity. It's another to risk these thousands on a non-profit generating activity.
posted
I'll pick on Wal-Mart for you, Farmgirl! I'm mad because it appears that they are soon putting Toys R Us out of business. Mr. Opera's company handles all of the transactions for Toys's gift cards, and he said it's pretty common knowledge that they're going out of business next year and will only be selling baby items from then on.
posted
I love Toys-R-Us and hate that it's going out of business. No one has the enormous selection that they do including Wal-Mart.
But isn't it strange that we're pissed that Wal-Mart is pushing them out of business since they did the same thing to so many smaller toy stores.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I thought ToysARus was just subdividing their childrens clothing line and baby furniture lines further and spinning them off, I didn't think they were going out of business.
posted
here in Maryland, we have something called the Maryland Food Bank. it takes donations from independent people but also from supermarkets. the volunteers at the food bank then determine whether the food is okay to be given to poor people. they then ration the food out and give a certain supply to providers for each county, and it's the providers' job to figure out who's really in need and to distribute the food accordingly. it works quite well. Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Something like that makes the most sense - the donor provides the food as-is, the distributor takes the risk (for which they'd obtain insurance).
I think pooled programs like that are the only solution.
posted
Here's a potential solution to some of the problems caused by our overly-litigious society. It is made up of two components.
1. Caps on damages other than actual damages (i.e. punitive, excessive pain-and-suffering, etc.) This would discourage the average money-digging, ambulance-chasing Joe Shmuck lawyer--not to be confused with the average Joe Dagonee Shmoe lawyer, who has nothing but the good of all mankind as his intentions--from wanting to take on stupid frivolous lawsuits, since there is much less economic incentive.
2. Instate a review board for lawyers which has more teeth than the average State Bar Association. When an attorney had more than one lawsuit thrown out by a judge as frivolous, give the review board the power and the mandate to ban the jerk from practicing law for 5 years. That oughtta be enough of a disincentive for the few overly-greedy attorneys to maybe watch their back.
posted
One of my roomies worked (briefly) for Mrs. Weiners - it's a fast food chicken chain, like KFC.
He would bring home boxes of chicken that was perfectly good, but by policy they had to throw away.
When I worked at Staples, the manager had to supervise the destruction of all the pallets and pallets of lined school paper instead of donating them to local charities because, as Dag pointed out, they didn't want to give consumers an incentive not to buy.
Mass production + Cheap labor = low cost which in turn means it's often cheaper to throw out a gadget, clothing or whathaveyou than it is to have it repaired.
That was the beginning of the disposable economy, but the policies regarding disposal of food stems from efforts to develop lawsuit protection just as much as an effort to not give consumers a reason not to buy their product. Example - "If we don't buy chicken, they'll give it away instead."
I'm just as guilty of the practice - I buy my clothing from Wal-Mart and Target, both chains import bulk quantities of product manufactured abroad with much lower labor costs.
Would I pay a higher cost to a company that manufactures all of their goods domestically? Probably not - although I do buy Red Wing shoes because they are consistently good quality and very durable. But by the same token, I could buy five or six pairs of similar black leather shoes from Wal-Mart for the same price.
posted
1. Caps on non-real damages is a mixed bag - some companies would then assume such costs as a price of doing business. "We produce chainsaws with this potential defect. We anticipate x lawsuits from mishaps with a max of y penalty = operating margin. However, if we sell z chainsaws and the profit from Z exceeds the anticipated accidents multiplied by maximum lawsuits for that run (say every 100), we still make money."
2. Professionals are notoriously reluctant to harshly discipline one of their own. Medical review boards work fine in theory, but in practice they are less than punitive.
I recall a case in Florida that let a doctor off with a slap on the wrist for amputating the wrong leg. I'd have to do some digging to find specific case references, but instances like this make me extremely reluctant to discuss lawsuit caps on issues like medical malpractice.
posted
My College Campus (Drake University) has a Pizza Hut that has to lock up its garbage by corporate policy to keep homeless people from getting their throw away pizzas. That is about ten a night with just a slight burn on the cheese. It is weird. Our garbage is too good for you...
posted
The County I live in used to have a "Gut Wagon" that took deer and cattle hit on the road and took them to be butchered for the county home. But no more, they just push them off the road for the buzzards.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
In the 1950's the Navy used to pull into (I think tokyo harbor) Japan, and make an arrangement with a local madam and her brothel:
The "girls" stood at the end of the chow line on board ship, and the men brought their food trays to them. The girls would scrape the meat into one garbage can, the bread into another, and so on.
That was their payment. In return for this payment, the girls would take paint and brushes from the ship supply, and paint the ship.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I read an article about how Walmart has applied a tremendous amount of pressure to the Vlasic pickle company, by buying gallon jars of pickles in such large quantities that Vlasic can't say no.
Walmart then sells these gallon jars for prices below what you'd pay for a quart jar of pickles in a supermarket. Consequently, Vlasic's supermarket sales have slumped, to the point where they actually rely on the profit from the sales of the gallon jars at Walmart, except that Walmart applies so much pressure to reduce prices, that Vlasic is essentially giving them the pickles with hardly any markup.
Can you say predatory pricing? (see Dilbert today)
The really sick part of all this, is that a gallon of pickles will go bad long before the average family can use them, so more than half the pickles are expected to be thrown away.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I think Tony's Pizza in Salina (manufactures frozen pizza), KS greatly reduces price on less than perfect pizzas. I hear you can get a LOT of cheap pizza.
I don't know about dated stuff though.
Posts: 440 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Well the only thing you can actually blame is effeciency in a system. The current system in place makes it more effecient for Walmart to have the practices that they do. Most corporations put quite a bit of research into display and treatment of products. For the most part someone figured out they make money by having the practices that they have. I used to work at a large grocery store when I was a teenager and even slightly bruised or unattractive fruit was thrown into large barrels and then sold to local farms as feed. However at the same time even slightly damaged goods off the shelves were thrown into big grocery carts in the back which are then sold later at a big discount. They simply understood the fact that if someone sees a beat up store with some bad products it gives a bad impression of everything and less product is sold. However they still get some money out of everything.
That and though you can be angry at people that sue the legal system is in place to defend you! Though I do agree.. our legal practices seem a bit.. out of proportion now a days.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
One of the justifications for both economics and law as fields of study essential to implementing moral systems is that both deal with assigning costs to make desirable behaviors and outcomes more efficient and thus more likely to occur.
Both often lose sight of this, using their own methods to decide which outcomes are "desirable" and not acknowledging the circularity involved.
But efficiency entails, in part, assigning costs to those who receive the benefit. And systems that can identify inefficiencies such as these can help come up with better ways to allocate those costs in such a way as to encourage charity.
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